Point out the reason for a three department organization of the Sunday-school. Should each department have a superintendent? What is the value of close supervision of teaching? Should superintendents be trained for their work? What are the leading qualifications of a good superintendent? Why should you consider the value of language as part of your equipment to teach? What is the true origin of language? How do you account for the first words used by a child? X THE USE OF SYMBOLS MY FIRST notion of a chair is a picture of an old armchair in my father's house. The chair I sat upon at the table was a highchair. This name kept it separate and apart from the armchair, but bit by bit my mind began to discern the relations of similarity in many objects that at first seemed wholly separate and distinct. I discerned seat, back, and legs. These essential parts rightly joined make my idea of chair. All objects having these marks I call chair. Many accidental quali First Notions ties are found in the different objects. The seat is of wood, or of cane, or of plush, or of iron. The back is square, or round, or long, or short, or braced, or free from braces. The chair is painted, or oiled, or plain. The quality of wood is oak, or pine, or poplar, or mahogany. But in all this varying detail my mind fastens upon legs, seat, and back. These essential parts must be present. Remove one or more of these, and it is not chair. Thus by seeing the similarity in essential parts I am able to group all such objects into one general notion, and that notion I call chair. The soul sees (perceives) objects through the senses. Ideas of these arise in consciousness. In this way the soul obtains a report for itself of the objective world. It comes into the possession of possible knowledge. This possible knowledge is made into actual knowledge by the act of the soul upon it in consciousness. Attention, as interest or will, holds this possible knowledge in consciousness until the soul knows it. Memory retains knowledge. Imagination, aided by feeling, combines the products of memory into ideal forms, and then the soul is prepared to investigate these experiences and organize them into the highest utility. The powers by which it does this are called the cognitive powers. These powers discover the essential relations existing between the various facts of knowledge gathered in the soul. They group these facts into appropriate classes on the basis of these discerned relations, and thus enable the soul with a few symbols, or names, to carry large groups of related facts of knowledge. Our individual experiences are so numerous and so varied that it would be impossible to carry them in memory, or make any substantial progress in thought, if we were obliged to have as many different names or symbols in the soul as we have had experiences through the These are the powers then that economize effort by building senses. Cognitive Powers away from concrete, individual experiences, into symbols, laws and principles, or, in other words, they are the powers through which the spirit universalizes itself. They are the last development of the soul on the intellectual side. All previous acts in the education of the intellect should point to the final development of these powers at their best. These cognitive powers are three: conception, judgment, reason. They develop in the order named, each using the material furnished by the preceding one, and thus producing an order of development of the greatest significance in teaching. These powers do not immediately report sense experiences, but they do produce immediate knowledge, since all these relations which they discover to exist are themselves objects of knowledge. We have then to keep in mind two different groups of objects of knowledge: that large and rich and concrete group of materials or objects of knowledge which are the soul's report of its experiences with the objective world; (2) that equally important, suggestive, and abstract group of objects of knowledge which the soul itself creates. (1) It will be seen, therefore, that these powers Cognitive Powers with Relations deal absolutely with relations. They increase the sum of knowledge in the mind. Inasmuch as relations constitute the materials upon which these powers act, they are usually called abstract powers, and, because they work out into groups all concrete material of our presentative powers, they are sometimes called the elaborative powers of the soul. The soul names these relations in the same way that it names its perceptions of things; thus we have words, or signs, or symbols, or marks, which denote products of these, and it is these products, these names, that become the basis of our organic thought; in other words, these products organize the concrete facts into laws and principles of wide and far-reaching application. We are very much fettered when we are dependent upon concrete data derived from the senses. We are unfettered and free when we have these powers to build our thoughts into principles and laws. The power of the soul that builds these general notions on the basis of similarity is conception. This process is unending. There is never a time when a word is so full of meaning that Conception wider meaning may not attach to it. Our first notion of God is often simple and vague. never cease to attach new meaning to the divine |